Creating your Own Paper and Make Origami Paper Crafts

Creating your own paper crafts have been around for many years. As kids we made paper Mache out of newspapers and made all sorts of animals by soaking the paper in water and using a blown up balloon and gluing layers of paper on top of each other until you had enough, and creating the required shape. Then it was allowed to dry and painted to represent the animal. These were often used for money boxes.

It didn’t stop there. People used their creativity and started to make their own patterned paper to create cards, invitations and many other beautiful things. Paper crafts are a great activity for the whole family to have fun making things together.

Origami Paper Crane

photo by pipays photostream on flickr

Create your own paper

You can use a variety of assorted papers to make you beautiful papers. Some of these are:

Newspapers for grey smoky colored paper

Toilet paper

Egg cartons

Typing paper

Old napkins

Paper bags

Things you need to make your papers

Plastic dish big enough to lay your frame in

2 Pieces of felt for blotting your paper

Blender to pulp the paper up

Choice of different colored papers to tear up

A Piece of screen the size of your paper

2 teaspoons starch (if want to use as writing paper)

Spare newspapers to soak up moisture

Bottle or rolling pin

Method for making paper

Tear the pieces of paper into small pieces, and half fill blender. Fill the blender with some warm water and run the blender slowly then increase speed as the pulp looks smooth. Make sure there are no lumps. If using starch add it now and stir.

Place the screen in the bottom of the flat dish and pour pulp in. Move it around to get the pulp evenly on the screen. Lift out the screen and keeping it level let it drain. Place the screen on a piece of felt and place other piece of felt on top, these will act as blotters. You could put extra newspapers under and on top of this to soak up moisture.

Now use rolling pin or similar to press out any excess water. Remove the newspapers Turn over the blotter and screen without moving the pulp.

Lay it carefully on a shelf to dry for twenty four hours. If you made too much pulp then make another sheet of paper adding different colors to make it look different.

Ideas for preschoolers

This is so simple. You can use anything from combs, buttons, and scissors, anything that will block the light and create a shadow, which in actual fact fades the paper around the articles.

You will need

Colored pieces of paper

Assorted items like suggested above

I have used a doily, button, comb and a stencil. Just lay out on the ground or on a table and leave in the sun for several hours.

This can be used as an experiment for the children to explain just how hot the sun is and why they need to put on their sunscreen. When you have the desired effect, the kids could even color them in which will give them something else to keep them occupied and have fun too.

DVD Origami paper crafts

Making Origami

This is another craft that has been around for centuries. As paper disintegrates there is no guaranteed proof as to where it originated from. Although some believe it was the Japanese, Chinese and then others suggest that the Spanish folded paper before the twelfth century.

People have folded paper as gifts to their gods

Paper Planes

I think nearly every child at sometime would have made one of these at school. There are some simple plans for planes this or more involved ones this site shows how to fold the paper for some of these.

Birds

You can also make a variety of different birds like Eagles, Cranes, bird of Paradise, Flamingos and many others

Fish

You can encourage you children to even make some fish and hang them from their bedroom ceilings. Some of these are Angel, Kissy, Goldfish, and many other paper crafts.

If you love making things with paper then I hope you enjoy making some from this site which shows you how to fold heaps of different things. You name it and I think you will find it there.

Crafters- How to make easy paper craft ideas - Info BarrelThere are so many different kinds of crafts and hobbies that you can make from your own home. Or of course you can join a club and learn the techniques on making a variety of crafts. How often have you gone to garage sales and seen wonderful home mad

Comments

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Jean Bakula 4 years agofrom New Jersey

This looks like fun! My son takes karate and for every party the dojo has, they decorate with origami cranes. They have made some beautiful ones. Also, one of his friends made a dozen origami roses for his girlfriend once. I thought that was so romantic! Definitely on my list of new things to learn!

Author

Eileen Hughes 6 years agofrom Northam Western Australia

The Pelton, wow that would be a real shame to waste real money as too hard to get, great idea with the shredder though.

ThePelton 6 years agofrom Martinsburg, WV USA

One thing I find that is nice to have when making paper is a shredder. I happened to inherit one, along with some other things, and I find that you can turn a bunch of paper into little pieces, and then toss them into your tub along with other fibers, and get a paper with little half-readable bits all over it. Just don't use shredded paper money for this, as it is too strong a paper, and will fall out of the sheet after it dries.

Liz Goltra 6 years ago

Great ideas. Thank you for posting!

p.sangeetha 7 years ago

Thank you

Tiffany C. Hill 7 years agofrom kareeniebeanie.com

Thanks!

Author

Eileen Hughes 7 years agofrom Northam Western Australia

theindianblues, thanks so much for that glad it helped you.

theindianblues 7 years agofrom Some where on the Globe

Nice work and useful information. I was always wondered how the people make all those with paper and this hub gave me clue about it. Thanks for publishing such a nice topic. I voted up and marked as useful.

Alissa 7 years agofrom Rocky Hill, CT

Awesome, awesome hub. Very much appreciated!

Author

Eileen Hughes 7 years agofrom Northam Western Australia

koffeeklatch gals, Thanks for that, its amazing what you can do with paper, that's for sure.

Susan Haze 7 years agofrom Sunny Florida

What a wonderful hub. Great information about making paper. Interesting ideas about oragami projects

Leptirela 7 years agofrom I don't know half the time

so COOL :))) love it

Author

Eileen Hughes 7 years agofrom Northam Western Australia

Blue Parrot, there is a problem Socks arent paper though, but you are right you can make things from socks for sure. Thanks for stopping by

blue parrot 7 years agofrom Madrid, Spain

And also sock puppets. I think those are the easiest to make. You start out trying to make a princess, but if the result is not royal enough, you call it a witch, and if you are a feminist, you may call it a wizzard. At any rate it will need some paint and some colourful cloth tied around its neck. Your thumb and middle finger will be its hands. And then comes the photo session to get material for a hub ...

Author

Eileen Hughes 7 years agofrom Northam Western Australia

creativelycc, Hope you enjoy it, Its amazing the things you can make too from it.

bkcreative, yes it is fun and something you can do with the kids even simple things. Without any mess too. thanks for the lovely comments too. cheers

BkCreative 7 years agofrom Brooklyn, New York City

I've been planning to make paper forever - you make it seem so easy. Ok, I'll bookmark this and use it for reference. I'm a big origami fan by the way.

Author

Eileen Hughes 7 years agofrom Northam Western Australia

support med, yes there are so many different types of craft too we just cannot do all of them but hey its fun trying.

nikki1 7 years ago

Love this hub. Thank you. I love crafting.

Author

Eileen Hughes 7 years agofrom Northam Western Australia

ethel, yes kids love this type of thing. thank for stopping by

Eileen Kersey 7 years agofrom Kingston-Upon-Hull

We used to do this years ago and have just decided to give our book on origami to our young relatives. Fun Hub Eileen

Author

Eileen Hughes 7 years agofrom Northam Western Australia

prasetio30, thanks yes can be fun for the kids. or creative things to do for the adults. others very hard to do from some of the origami ones that I have seen..

prasetio30 7 years agofrom malang-indonesia

Nice information. I think my student liked to make one. Origami is a good crafts and we need patience to make kind of origami. But nice to tried. Good work, my friend.

Author

Eileen Hughes 7 years agofrom Northam Western Australia

lamme, thanks, hope you have fun doing it.

aleida_77, I never thought of it like that thanks, it keeps kids busy and doing something. thanks both for reading.

aleida_77 7 years agofrom Los Angeles

What a fun hub. This is somewhere between a science experiment and art. Love it!

Lamme 7 years ago

Thumbs up! I'm bookmarking this hub, we're going to use it for one of our homeschooling projects. Thanks for the great information.

Author

Eileen Hughes 7 years agofrom Northam Western Australia

Jill of all trades. thats awful losing it to the hungry little devils. Oh well maybe this will get your creativness started again. cheers thanks.

jill of alltrades 7 years agofrom Philippines

I love this hub! I love doing things with paper. Would you believe I used to have a collection of gift wrappers and other papers until some enterprising termites digested them? Hahaha. Anyway, I still love working with paper but I stopped having a collection.